So this will go down as one of the worst days of my life…
I get home from what felt like a fairly successful test session at Sears. The car’s in one piece, seemed to run ok, probably not any faster than it was but at least I seem to be over my distributor problem and I have a list of improvements I want to make over the winter.
I start unstrapping the car and as I release the last strap (drivers front) my world instantly turns to shit… The car starts rolling backwards (I live on a hill) and FALLS off the trailer and keeps going. I haul ass and grab the car and dig my heels in and try to slow it down but it just keeps gaining momentum. I hang on as it drags me along for a few seconds and finally it’s going fast enough that I know I just have to let go…
The next several seconds are agonizing as I watch the car go rolling downhill, backwards. I know there is no possible way this will end well. If it keeps going straight it will go right through a house at the bottom of the hill. Then at pretty much the last second the front wheels hook and it takes a hard 90 degree turn to the right (still going backwards) and slams into the side of a concrete staircase of a neighbors house…
I don’t know this at first. I can’t see the car. I just hear the sickening sound of the impact. Still running I catch up to the car and the rear is completely destroyed… I’m in shock and sick to my stomach. The next hour is a blur. The neighbors come home. I call a tow truck. We pull the car out (the driver’s rear wheel won’t turn because the rear qtr is flattened against the wheel). The tow guy is awesome though and we get the car on his flatbed and he drives it up the hill and helps me get it back into my garage.
Wow. It’s a miracle that no one was killed/injured. It’s also amazing that the damage to the staircase seems to be cosmetic. If it had hit any other part of the house it would have wound up INSIDE the house…
So that’s the good news. But, I’m CRUSHED 🙁 if you’ve been following the blog over the last year and a half you know how much time and energy has been invested in this car. It’s such a huge setback and I don’t even know if the car is repairable… I’ll update more later but I need some time to decompress…
Well I got the MSD distributor in and got the car running and set the timing around 34*. Then I had to figure out whether I was going to try to get a test in before the next race. Kind of last minute I decided to see if I could sneak into the test at Sears Pt. today (Monday). You’re supposed to call 48hrs before the test session to reserve a spot. But it was the weekend and no one was answering. I left a msg explaining that I wanted to get in for the afternoon session (1pm to 4pm) and left my number. Monday morning I got the call that I could come if I wanted. So I loaded up and headed to the track.
First session I was just feeling the car out. Seemed to be running ok. I had forgotten my lap timer so I didn’t know what kind of times I was running. My friend Matt came to help out and after my first session we re-timed the car just to make sure I was still at 34*. Second session I did another 6 laps or so. I was rev’ing the car higher with the new motor and at the end of the session I realized that I was bogging coming out of 6 and coming out of 11. I *thought* I ran the whole track in 3rd and 4th (can’t remember for sure, I’ll have to go back and check some videos). But I realized I needed to downshift to 3rd in turn 6 and down to 2nd in turn 11.
After the 2nd session I decided I wanted to see if my cool shirt setup was working. In a previous post I explained how I bought a little “cycle timer” board so that I could run the pump for say 30 seconds and then stop it for a couple of minutes and then repeat. The one time I used the cool shirt was at Buttonwillow in April and I didn’t have the cycle timer. I noticed that by the end of the race I didn’t feel like the setup was cooling any more. Not sure why this is but after mentioning it to Corey he said his switch allowed you to control the “amount” of cooling. After doing a little research I found out they sell a switch that does the cycling. But it’s over $100 for the switch! So I found this cycle timer kit for $25 and wired it up. Anyway, I got a bag of ice from the cafe at the track and got the cooler in the car.
Went out for the 3rd session and had a couple of clean laps, then I slowed to let a Ferrari by. Then I got back on it. But on the 4th or 5th lap when I got just past turn 2 I saw my oil light come on?! I’ve been plagued with oil pressure issues since day one and it looked like I was back to square one. The light comes on at 20psi at that’s where the gauge was. So I thought, well, it’s low but not zero and it was just for a moment, let’s see what happens. I did another lap and there was no problem until I crested turn 2 again and then the light went on again. And this time the gauge read almost zero. So I slowed up till the pressure recovered and cruised around and got off track.
At that point there was only about 20 minutes left so I packed up and headed home. I was running my traqmate/gopro camera setup for the first time (I ran the traqmate at Buttonwillow but it wasn’t connected to the gopro). I’ll have to load up the data and see what lap times I did…
Ok, after the epic fail at Buttonwillow it was time to dig into the Javelin and figure out wtf was going on with the timing. I had the car dyno tuned before the race to make sure the engine was running good. And it did run good on the dyno. So what happened? Well, the guys tuning it actually had mentioned that they thought the advance was sticking or something (but they didn’t say “hey, your distributor is junk, change it). They pulled the cap, changed springs and I guess got it to behave well enough that it did a few pulls without sticking… Once I got on track and started beating on it though it just got worse and worse.
The only positive in all this is I’m learning a lot more about distributors. I pulled the distributor (it’s a Pertronix Flame Thrower) and immediately saw that the gear was chewed up 🙁 When the motor was first disassembled after I blew it up, Rob discovered that the cam gear was really knife edged. but, he said the distributor gear looked ok… unfortunately I didn’t think to look too closely at the dist. gear before I put the distributor back in the car. So I can’t tell if all this wear is just from the little bit of running I did at Buttonwillow or if it was already worn some. Either way the gear is toast now.
I ordered an MSD distributor (because after talking to people about my problem everyone said “run an MSD”). Jeff also said I should just remove the mechanical advance and lock out the timing. So, my first distributor lesson was removing the vacuum advance, removing the mechanical advance springs and weights and removing the gear so I could rotate the shaft to lock the timing. I also installed a bronze gear on the MSD.
After all this monkeying around with the MSD I felt like I knew a lot more about what I was looking at. So I went back to the Pertronix and took a closer look at the mechanical advance mechanism. I immediately saw the problems. It was floppy and one edge of the center part that the weights rest against was worn. I could see how the weights were slipping OVER the center plate… so that explains why the timing was all over the map. I also realized that there were washers/shims missing between the distributor housing and the gear on the pertronix. There’s a good 1/8″ of up/down movement. The MSD doesn’t have this up/down play. After I got the motor rebuilt the Pertronix distributor was not installed, I put it in. When installing it I noticed there WAS a VERY thin shim on the shaft between the housing and the gear. It was so thin it actually tore while I was installing the dist. so I just pulled it out. I’m pretty sure the dist. is not supposed to have as much up/down play as the Pertronix did but I’m a little confused because even if the shim had not been damaged it wouldn’t have gotten rid of most of the play… my theory at this point is that the up/down play the Pertronix had caused the gear wear AND the advance issues. Like I said, just a theory. I did some research on distributor gear wear and found a lot of posts from AMC/Jeep people experiencing a similar issue. They talk about “cam walk” and there are a couple of options for preventing this. One is a plate that bolts to the engine block behind the timing gear and the other is a “cam button” that rides on the end of the cam gear bolt head and fills the space between the bolt head and the timing cover. None of this is supposed to be necessary if you are running a flat tappet cam (which I am).
So that’s the latest. The MSD is going in with a locked out advance and I’ll try to set the timing around 34*. Assuming I can get the car running well again I will try to get to a Sears Point test day and depending on how that goes decide whether it’s worth trying to run the last race of the year Nov. 10/11.
Well, that was a total bust… The title of my last post was “back in game” but it looks like I spoke to soon. I spent the week before the race nut and bolting the car and cleaning it. Doing whatever I could to make sure the car was ready to go. Friday I got up and hooked up my new (used) tilt trailer and got ready to load the car. I bought this trailer from Tim Pinelli who was racing the AIX Outlaw series but has decided to move on. Loading on my previous trailer was a bit of a project. I had to drive the car up to the trailer, pull the ramps out and get them set up, crawl underneath it and hook a strap up to the front sway bar and then use the winch to pull it up. It worked but I was looking to make my life easier. The tilt trailer lived up to my hopes. I simply pulled the two pins to let the ramp tilt, went and got in the car and just drove it up. The one issue I had was deciding how/where to strap it from in front with the new set up. With the old trailer I went THROUGH the wheels. Mostly this was because the trailer was so short that there was not enough room to use a ratchet strap effectively. With the new trailer I was able to hook around the lower control arm. Everything looked good so I hit the road.
Stopped at the first rest stop on I5 about an hour into my trip. After hitting the rest room I did a walk around the trailer and checked all the straps. That’s when I noticed it… I had stupidly run the straps UNDER my front swaybar arms. These arms are steal and have a sharp edge. On the drivers side I noticed the strap getting all frayed and fuzzy where it passed under the swaybar arm. crap! I loosened up the strap and about 50% of the width of it was completely sawed through?! The other side wasn’t too bad. Luckily I had some other straps but they were much lighter duty straps. So I changed the straps so they went OVER the swaybar arms and then added the additional light duty straps I had. I then drove to the other side of the highway to the truck stop and tried to see if they sold straps like the ones I had cut… they didn’t. So I just had to get back on the road and keep my fingers crossed.
Got to Buttonwillow without any more drama and started setting up “camp”. Another reason I bought the tilt trailer is that it has a flat surface. The other trailer was open in the center. I bought a tent and set it up on the trailer. This meant I didn’t have to unload everything from the back of my truck so I could sleep in it. Setting up the tent went pretty well although the wind picked up just as I was trying to set up which blew the tent around until I got some bungee cords and lashed it to the trailer. The first night I didn’t use the “rain fly”. If you don’t camp (I’ve never used a tent before this weekend) a rain fly is a cover that keeps moisture/condensation from getting in your tent. Luckily Adam Ginsberg loaned me a monster comforter which kept me warm enough but without the rainfly the TOP of the comforter was damp in the morning… put the rain fly on for Saturday night and it was much better. No moisture!
Anyway, you probably don’t give a crap about the tent and want to hear about the racing. Well, Saturday morning I head out for the practice session. I was late to grid and when I did get out there were two local yellows for the whole session. So I never got a green flag lap…
For qualifying I went to start the car and had some trouble. It didn’t want to start. When I finally got it started I had to rev it to keep it running; it didn’t want to idle. So I get on track and the first lap I see the oil light come on. WTF!? So I immediately pulled off. No way I was going to take a chance blowing up this freshly rebuilt motor! Looking back I should have tried to look into the not wanting to start/idle issue. Instead I obsessed about whether to add another quart of oil or not before the race. Before I blew the motor I didn’t have an oil dipstick. Lame, I know. Well, when the motor was rebuilt I had a dipstick added. The dipstick said the pan was full so I shouldn’t have needed more oil (and I have a 3qt accusump).
For the race I had trouble getting the car running again. But I did get it fired and I got out on track. Within a few laps the car started running bad. It was missing and popping and back firing. I pulled the car off and parked it. Ughh… what now… After the race I got Mike Plum and Adam to help me. Everyone said the symptoms sounded like timing. So they rotated the distributor a bit and the car fired right up and idled nice. Huh, so the timing was off? Well they got a timing light and rev’d it up and set the total to 34* or so. Then we shut it down. Problem solved right? nope, I immediately tried to start it again and it wouldn’t. same shit. at that point I figured I must have damaged the distributor when I blew the motor and we didn’t know it.
Besides the timing issue the car was also handling terrible. It was understeering really bad. Well, after getting some dinner at the Agent 47 trailer (thanks for the awesome grub Corey!) I walked back to the car and noticed the driver’s front tire was FLAT… that explains the understeering. I did have one unmounted, shaved tire ready to go but the with distributor problem there was no point in trying to get it mounted…
So that was it… I hung out Saturday night, got up Sunday morning and headed home… here are some pics and video.
Well, it’s been 5 months since I blew the motor at Buttonwillow. Let’s recap what’s happened since then… Early May I brought the Motor to Rob’s Auto Machine in Hayward. Took a couple of months for the rebuild to be completed. End of June I picked up the motor and was able to get it in the car (just sitting on the motor mounts, not hooked up). Then my usual work hell hit and I spent the next 2 months working 7 days a week; nothing got done on the car. Finally, end of August I get my life back. Started putting the car back together and got it fired up last weekend! Then I scheduled a dyno day at Rob’s to get it all tuned up. I had just gotten it so it would start but did not set timing or anything else. Luis and Steve from TRE Speed Shop (who did the tuning) welded in an o2 sensor bung into the exhaust and spent time changing jets to get the air/fuel ratio where they wanted it (right around 12.5:1 at WOT).
This afternoon I pulled the car out, washed it and finally put the hood back on (the last piece that was still off the car). So that’s it. Car is tuned and race ready again. I’ve signed up for the October Buttonwillow race. Looking forward to getting back out there. Unfortunately the car isn’t really any better than it was in April. I had hoped to develop the car over the last few months and maybe make some aero changes but instead the time/money was spent on rebuilding the motor just to get back to where I was. That’s ok though, if you read my earlier post about having Dave Brown run the car you know that I haven’t learned to drive the car to it’s current potential anyway. There’s several seconds on the table if I can learn how to drive better without changing anything on the car.
Over the winter I’m hopefully going to get the car lowered. Al and Control Freak Suspensions says he’s working on a drop spindle setup with Wilwood. Hopefully it will be ready soon and that will be the foundation for my lowering project…
here’s a picture of the car on the dyno yesterday. see you at the track!
While the Javelin is laid up with a blown motor I’m not totally out of options for racing. It’s time for another round of Chumpcar racing with the Dirt Track Pirates. This time last year was our first race weekend in the RX-7. If you haven’t read my write-up from last year let me just say it was a disaster. It was fun and a real learning experience but the car was only on track for 7 of the 14 hours of the race and we finished almost in last place…
We followed that race up with a double 7 hour Chumpcar race weekend at Fontana in Oct. of 2011. That weekend went much better. We came in 2nd in both races! Now it was time for our 3rd outing. We had high hopes. Was a win finally in our grasp?
We got into Buttonwillow Friday afternoon and unloaded and got through tech. Then we hit Willow’s Ranch for dinner and turned in for a good nights sleep. Got up early and already knew it was going to be a scorcher! The race started at 9am and went till 11pm and the temp was north of 100 degrees for almost all of it! I heard people say it was 107 in the paddock mid-day… Dan had set the driver order and pit strategy and Joe headed out first. Then it was my turn and after me Dan went and then Jeff. Everything was going great until we got black flagged for going too fast under a yellow. They pulled us into the pits for what should have been (we think) a drive through. Instead they held us for a full 5 minutes which dropped us back a couple of laps.
We were in the top 4 all day and even lead for a while but after the black flag we were playing catchup the rest of the race. Because of the heat the race was red flagged two separate times. In both cases someone had heat stroke and the ambulance had to take them to the hospital. We couldn’t race without an ambulance on station so the race was stopped until a replacement ambulance showed up.
It was brutally hot in the car. Several teams were running cool shirt setups and we are DEFINITELY doing that next year. But this year we just had to roast. Each stint was about an hour and forty five minutes. After my first stint I climbed out and thought I might pass out. The only thing that saved me was the towel the guys dunked in the cooler of ice water. It was soaking wet and I just covered my head and shoulders with it. Probably took me a 1/2 hour before I started feeling ok again…
In the end we came in 4th… not bad but we were hoping for more. However, because of our 2nd place finishes at Fontana and the 4th place finish here we’re qualified for the regional championships at Sears Point (formerly Infineon) in December. Can’t wait!
*sorry no pics/video yet. I know it’s lame. Didn’t really take any still pics and haven’t had time to throw together a video. Will get to it eventually and update this post.
Ok, the motors blown but the question was, how bad? I took off the valve covers and manually rotated the engine. none of the valves moved and the engine wouldn’t turn a full 360*. It hangs up on something. I decided instead of seeing if it’s “just” bent valves or “just” a broken timing chain that I wanted to pull the whole motor and take it to a machine shop. Don suggested Rob’s Automotive Machine in Hayward. So, I went to Jeff’s on Saturday to borrow his hoist. Spent the rest of the weekend tearing apart a car that I spent a year and a half building… fun. anyway, on Tuesday morning I did the final pull and put the engine in the truck and took it to Rob’s.
Rob sr. disassembled the motor and here’s the report:
1. ALL valves bent
2. Timing chain AND gear broken
3. Timing cover is broken
4. Crank is cracked
5. Cam mounted distributor gear is kinda chewed up (all the teeth are knife edged)
The last issue that was uncovered is that the bearings are all pretty burnt up. If you’ve been following the blog you’ve probably read a few times where I’ve seen my oil pressure light come on and had to get off the track quick. I’m guessing the burnt bearings are due to that. I’m going to install a dipstick this time and USE it…
So, it’s not looking too good for me making the Willow Springs race… Next race is in June back at Buttonwillow. I’m considering missing that one too because it’s only a week after the Chumpcar race. I want to get the rebuilt motor in AND get the car lowered before I try to run it again…
Fresh off my test day with Dave Brown I had less than a week to get ready for Buttonwillow. I decided last minute to try and get a little more downforce at the front to try to help the push Dave said was holding the car back. I had previously cut out a pair of lexan front spoiler extenders but never installed them. I really wanted to try something, so 2 nights before I had to leave I started figuring out how I was going to mount them. I spent an hour or so the first night and finished up the night before I left for the race (Thursday). The real pain with this is that it had to be something I could take off and re-install at the track because I wouldn’t be able to load the car on the trailer with it mounted. So I drilled a bunch of holes and made four half-assed struts to keep the spoiler from deflecting. It looked promising…
Friday I got up and got loaded and headed for the track. Got there around 4pm and found the Outlaw guys and pitted near them. It was hot and we already knew the weekend was going to be a scorcher. I unloaded the truck and put all my totes on the trailer and got my tool cart setup. then I got my “bed” set up in the back of the truck.
Saturday I headed out for the warmup session at 9am. Got 6 laps and a best of 2:14.x The rest of the AIX Outlaw group was running 1:57 – 2:04. So I was 10 seconds behind the slowest car in the group. I couldn’t tell if the front spoiler addition was helping or hurting. In qualifying I only got 1 lap before my damn oil light came on again. I shaved a second off and got down to 2:13.2… everyone else improved a couple of seconds so I actually lost ground.
I’ve been losing oil from somewhere for a while but couldn’t figure out where. Finally I got Ryan Walton to take a look. He’s a tech at a Toyota dealership and last years Outlaw champ. He poked around for a minute and suggested it was coming from the fuel pump… I had never thought about oil coming from there so I had never checked those bolts. They weren’t really loose but I was definitely able to cinch them down a bit. When I came in after the race things looked basically dry. Not 100% as I still have a little drop here and there but MUCH less that was leaking. Thanks Ryan!
The first lap of Saturdays race was pretty hairy. I think there were 3 times where someone put a wheel off and kicked up a dust cloud which leaves you COMPLETELY blind for a second or two! anyway, I survived the race and improved to a best lap of 2:10.8…
Let me take a moment to say it was really HOT! Knowing it was going to be a scorcher of a weekend I went looking for Derek Tsinger who had offered to sell me a used cool shirt setup at Infineon back in February. I didn’t buy it then but I was wanting it now. He had it and sold it to me. I ALMOST got it installed before the Saturday race but needed about 15 more minutes. In addition to the heat my back started to hurt at the end of the 30 minute race. I realized that although my seat holds my rib cage pretty snug my skinny butt actually moves around in the seat. It makes me use my lower back muscles to keep from moving and in the longer race sessions my muscles tire out and it really starts to hurt. of course that affects my concentration level. I need to try some foam or something to fill the voids so my butt can’t move around.
After the main races were done for the day an Endurance race started that went till 10pm at night. Pretty interesting to be sleeping in the back of my truck with cars still racing on track. I slept “ok” but one mildly annoying thing is that I parked my truck in a way that it was slightly tilted to one side…
Anyway, Sunday warmup was at 9am again. 6 laps and wasn’t able to improve my best time. at least my cool shirt was working (sort of). Not sure why but by the end of the session it wasn’t really cooling anymore. I had just wired it with an on/off toggle switch that Ron Klamecki gave me. I found out that Corey Weber has a timer switch that cycles the pump on/off. Only bummer is these “switches” are $150+ bucks. I’m buying a cycle timer kit for $30 bucks and am going to see if I can get that to work…
After looking at the track pictures from Van Happ and talking to some people it seemed like the nose/hood was still really lifting at speed. Talked to Corey about it more and he said maybe the front spoiler extensions were actually hurting in that they might be directing MORE air up through the grill and into the engine compartment. So, before qualifying I pulled the spoiler extensions off… Sunday Qualifying I did 7 laps and got back down to a 2:10.8 so I didn’t really see any difference with or without the spoiler…
Sunday’s race was quite an experience. It was my first standing start race. We came around and got lined up at start finish. I put the clutch in and the car was about to stall! I quickly gave it some revs and when the flag dropped I did the lamest lurching start ever… I did about 5 laps and then it happened. I missed a shift (went 3 -> 2 instead of 3 -> 4) and spun the motor sky high 🙁 it was strange because it didn’t lock up the rear and I didn’t realize how bad I had over rev’d the motor… I continued that lap and the next time I came onto the straight, at the top of 4th gear, the motor just went POOF!!! and died instantly… I pulled off between turns 1 and 2 waited out the race. Got towed back to my paddock spot, loaded up my junk and got back on the road for the 5 hour drive home.
Got home after dark and had to deal with getting the car back in the garage. I live on a hill and my drive way has an incline to it. That means I can only get the car in/out if I DRIVE it. well that wasn’t happening so what I tried to do to get it in was to let it roll down hill a little and then back it into my drive way. We’ll I didn’t cut the wheel early enough so I had to put on the brakes. I managed to beach it on the exhaust flange. what a pain. Had to get my wife to help me man handle the car over the hump and into the garage…
ugh… so there you have it. 3 races and my first blown motor. I can’t say this was totally unexpected. I knew it was a possibility that I was going to have something like this happen. I was just hoping it was later rather than sooner… I’m not going to touch the car for a couple of days. Just need to recover from the weekend.
here’s a video of Saturdays race. Unfortunately Sundays race wasn’t recorded… lame. I had done a great job all weekend making sure the camera and lap timer were working and on but for Sundays race I forgot to actually start recording. So when I finally got back to the paddock I turned the camera “off” but was actually turning it on… got 2+ hours of the car on the trailer driving home… luckily Bryan Rogers of Agent 47 was running the Drift cameras on all the cars so there should be footage of my race and the motor blowing. I’ll try to get it from Bryan and get it posted soon…
After two race weekends it’s clear that both the car and me are way out of our league. At Infineon I’m 10+ seconds behind the leaders and I’m even slower than the CMC2 cars (even though I should have almost 100 hp on them). So, the question was, how much is me and how much is the car. I know I’m not a very fast driver and I also know the car is far from optimized. I’d been thinking about trying to have a good driver do some laps to evaluate the car and try to answer the questions:
1) how far is the car off the pace vs. the other AIX cars?
2) how far off the cars potential am I?
I asked around in the garage at Infineon and Adam Ginsberg immediately suggested I talk to Dave Brown about driver coaching. Dave’s part of Life’s Good Racing. I hadn’t met Dave before but I’ve run into a lot of the other guys involved with Life’s Good Racing; Karl Chicca, Mark Deshelter (see the bad ass tube frame Javelin he’s slowly putting together here) and Charles. So, I called up Dave and we decided on meeting at Thunderhill for a NASA event. The Life’s Good Racing team was going to be at Thunderhill all weekend anyway running their ’69 Camaro in TTU. The idea was to get to Thunderhill on Friday and possibly run with Trackmasters in the afternoon to get familiar with the track again and then to run the full day on Saturday in NASA’s TTU class.
This would also be my first event where I “camped” out overnight in the back of my truck. I’ve been planning to start camping instead of booking hotel rooms to save money and to stay at the track and be close to the car and the rest of my crap. Since the first 2 race weekends had been at Infineon I had just gone home to sleep so I hadn’t had to sleep in the truck yet.
Anyway, things started out pretty rough on Friday. I got my trailer hooked up to my truck, loaded the truck and then went to start the car to pull it out of my garage and drive it up to my trailer. Well, the battery was dead. I had it on a trickle charger until 2 days earlier when I finally pulled off the charger and used the extension cord for something else. turns out I had left the master switch on which allows the alternator to draw current from the battery and run it down. ugh… I have an inclined driveway so I can’t just push the car out. I tried putting a battery jump pack on the battery (which is in the trunk) and it wasn’t enough to get the car started… I was really stuck. Finally I had the idea to try to use the jump pack at the front of the car (under the dash) thinking that maybe the resistance from the several feet of battery cable was keeping the starter from seeing max volts. turns out I was right. I put the positive clamp on the back of the master switch and the neg. clamp on the accelerator pedal (it was the closest bare metal I could find!). Well it worked but then I climbed out the car to un-clamp the jump pack and move it out of the way (you can see where this is heading). I climb back in car and the instant I’m about to touch the gas pedal the car stalls… climb out, get the jump pack, do it again… anyway, I manage to stall it a couple of more times before finally getting it up to the trailer… what a clusterf@ck!
After that fiasco I managed to get to the track ok and got pitted next to the Life’s Good Racing guys. But the drained battery would be a pain for the rest of Friday and into Saturday until I managed to get it fully recharged…
It had rained some on Friday and when I got there the track was still wet. I wasn’t going to run in the wet but later in the afternoon it had dried out. So I got signed up with Track Masters took to long getting suited up and on track and only had about a half session. then the rain came again for the last session so that was it for Friday. Saturday weather was great. I went out for the first session and only managed a 2:21.xx. yuch. one annoying thing I found out about running in TT is that the leader sets the pace for the out lap. The guy who was in the lead has this annoying habbit of going insanely slow (20 mph) so he bunches up the field behind him. I guess the idea is that when he finally goes he won’t run into any stragglers getting on track late and he’ll get a clean lap or two. Nice for him I guess but the problem is that it makes the outlap 4+ minutes, which out of a 20 minute session is a lot. Basically what I’m saying is that a 20 minute session only get’s you 4 (or 5) laps…
Next Dave got in the car and went out in HPDE 4. He did 3 laps – a 2:12.x, 2:04.x and a 207.x (traffic) and then he came in… (but I only knew about the 2:07 at the time as Karl just happened to time Dave’s last lap). that’s how a pro does it. wow. when he came in he said the accelerator pedal was sticking open and needed to be fixed. This was my fault. I had monkey’d with the pedal trying to raise it to try to make it possible to heel / toe, which I haven’t been able to do yet. in raising the pedal I created a situation where WOT had the pedal about an inch above the floor board and there was no positive stop on the pedal. I knew this and so I didn’t “floor” the pedal. But I didn’t think to tell Dave this and of course he DID floor it. the cable got kind of kinked and that was what was causing the sticking. anyway, I made a wooden “stop” and bolted it to the floor. but all this monkeying around made me miss the 2nd session…
In the 3rd session I got down to 2:15.x. I only got 3 laps though because my damn oil pressure light came on so I pulled in and added a quart of oil. Finally in the last session I got to 2:13.8… better but still pretty damn slow (although I had cars ahead of me on that lap I was not at full speed starting the lap so I should have been a bit quicker). So, I had my time and Dave’s time but I needed a time for one of the other AIX Outlaw cars. Well, I lucked out. Robin Riner was there with his Mustang so I had a comparative time from one of the guys I’m racing with in AIX Outlaw. So, here are the cold hard numbers…
Robin Riner (mid-pack AIX Outlaw) – 1:58.X (this was his best time on Saturday, on Sunday he actually did a 1:56.x but the track was more hooked up)
Dave Brown – 2:04.x 8 seconds back
Me – 2:13.x – 9 seconds back from Dave
OUCH! So I’m 9 seconds off the cars potential and the car is another 8 seconds behind mid-pack in the class I’m trying to race in. 17 seconds. That’s an eternity in racing. Obviously I have a lot of work to do on my driving. As for the car, Dave’s main comment was that the car pushes bad in high and even medium speed turns. Everyone’s been asking if the car is loose or if it pushes. I keep saying I think it pushes and Dave’s confirmed that’s the major issue. the car doesn’t want to turn…
So, how to fix it? Lowering the car will help a lot and I’ve got some 2″ drop spindles I’m going to try to get on soon. After I get the car lowered I need to try some aero to get more downforce on the front of the car. And I need to seal up the front grill area to keep the air from going into the engine compartment. multiple people have said the car tries to “fly” the nose going down the straight and that they can see the hood pops up slightly as the air gets under it.
So there you have it. The truth hurts. car is slow and I’m slower. I guess this is all part of the adventure. at least I have some hard numbers to work with now. next race is Buttonwillow in only 1 week!
here’s a couple of videos. First, Dave’s 3 laps. I love this video. it’s so cool to see the Javelin driven like it should be! next video is my fast lap (ok slow lap)…
well, another action packed weekend under my belt. I’m the slowest thing out there but I survived another weekend with myself and the car intact. Went to Joe’s on Friday and had him scale the car and adjust the toe. Needed to do this because we changed rear springs at Evil Genius when I was doing the dyno runs to find the vibration. Got to the track Friday afternoon and got setup in my garage space. I’ve been REALLY lucky to not only get garage space for these first two race weekends but also to be next to the CMC2 guys (Adam, Mike and Ron).
I felt a *bit* more prepared than last time in terms of the tools and supplies I brought. After getting the car gassed up and torq’ing the lug nuts I went home. Woke up at the crack to get back to the track at 7am and got ready for the 8:05am warmup. Got out on track and on my 2nd lap I thought start/finish was showing me the meatball flag but I wasn’t sure. Came around again and was able to see the small sign with my car # next to the flag. So I pitted after only 3 laps. Drove up to the flag station and was told I was leaking gas… great, now what?! so I pulled in to the garage and took a look. I think all that happened was I had the fuel cell completely full and some fuel sloshed out of the vent tube. Another lesson learned. Don’t overfill the fuel cell. My vent hose vented in the trunk and Adam suggested I vent it outside the car. So, I took a longer piece of hose and made a coil and then drilled a hole in the bottom of the trunk and passed the hose through. A small improvement to the car that will hopefully help keep me from getting further meatballs for leaking fuel…
In the qualifying session we only got 5 laps before there was some wreck or something and the session was checkered. but, at least I had a couple of sub 2:00 laps. my best was a 1:58.8. this is a good NINE seconds behind the fast AIX guys but at least I was back in the 1:58’s and felt that I could do a bit better with more track time… when I got back to the garage there was a lot of fluid on the underside of the car. after looking around for a while I realized it was coming out around the power steering reservoir cap. This is an aluminum can that I got from Speedway Motors. I don’t know what the deal is but after having it short time the cap will not close tightly anymore. I took a screwdriver and pried the lip out to make the cap seal tighter. I also wrapped a rag around the cap and duct taped it in place and hoped that would keep any fluid from going everywhere…
Saturday’s race started with some drama in turn 2. A couple of the AIX mustangs touched and there was lot of tire smoke and a white mustang spun off track. the rest of us all checked up and threaded our way through… after that I just got dropped by the pack. not only that but I spent most of the race dealing with faster cars (I checked my laps and out of about 55 cars in the session only about 10 had slower lap times than me)… my best lap in the race was only a 2:00.117. Not only do I need to get a lot faster than 1:58 but I also need to do it every lap…
After the race I went through the scales and Gaetano said I was leaking something. crap… so I pulled back in the garage and as I was backing in I could see a trail of fluid I was dropping. Hopped out and jacked the car up in the front. After a few minutes of poking around I found out that it was the OTHER power steering rack hard line that was leaking… argh! if you’ve read my previous posts you know I had another power steering leak in one of the hard line bypass tubes. I swapped it over to a hydraulic hose assembly. when I did that I had intended to do both of the bypass tubes but I wasn’t able to get 2 sets of the fittings I needed and because I had other things on my list to get ready for the race I decided not to mess with the bypass tube that wasn’t leaking. well, here was my reward. it failed in the same way the other one had. It was 4:30pm and I didn’t have the parts to make another hose. I had thought I was going to get home early Saturday night and hang out with my wife and have dinner. instead I started running around the track looking for AN -6 hose and fittings. went to McGee’s and after a lot of rummaging around they sold me a used piece of hose and used fittings. I’ve made a lot of braided hoses with AN hose ends and this should have taken about 10 minutes now that I had the parts. well, really quickly the whole thing turned south. I had my electric grinder with a cutoff wheel and made a nice cut on the hose. but when I tried to put the AN hose end collar on I couldn’t get it to go. The braid just sprung out every time. then I had to make a new cut and try again. I tried everything, electrical tape, tie wrap, leaving the tape on but nothing I did worked. I grabbed Adam’s bike and pedaled over to the Agent 47 trailer and asked those guys to help me. A couple of the mechanic’s tried for 20 minutes and they couldn’t get it either… I was FRUSTRATED. finally, a couple of hours into this fiasco Adam came back from dinner with new in-the-box Aeroquip hose and new fittings. He left earlier to make a parts run and I asked him to look for the parts. even after I got the stuff from McGees I told him to get it anyway if he could find it. it’s a good thing I did. working with the new hose went fairly smoothly. I was able to get one end on no problem. when I tried to get the other end on we ended up shearing the fitting off while tightening it! luckily I had the used fitting that I got from McGees. I used that and finally I had a completed hose. Got the hose installed, fired up the car for a few minutes. no leak! finally left the track at 8:30pm; completely exhausted but at least thinking I was ready for Sunday.
Sunday the first session wasn’t until 2pm. So I got to the track around noon and just had some lunch, gassed up the car, torq’d the lugnuts, etc… headed out for the qualifying session and on the out lap I saw my oil pressure light come on in a couple of turns… what the?! I went around one more lap and it did it again so I pulled off. not happy but I assumed I was just a little low. it’s not easy for me to check the level (no dipstick). I have to pull a plug on top of the oil pan kick out. it’s burried behind the headers. so, the car has to be up on jack stands and preferably not hot for me to check. oh, and I have to make sure that the accusump is FULL and CLOSED… anyway, I added a 1/2 qt. and hoped that would take car of it… you can probably see where this is going… I started the race and the light came on again?! I went around one more lap to make sure but I kept losing pressure in long turns so I had to pull off. so both of Sunday’s sessions were a total bust… my first DNF. Even though I’m totally uncompetitive I’m still bummed that I didn’t at least finish the race. I’m assuming/hoping/praying that I am just low on oil. Need to check it soon. I can’t imagine what else could cause me to lose oil pressure like that. If there is a problem with the engine I don’t know what I’ll do…
So I loaded up and headed home. oh, when I say home, I mean it. for the first time EVER I brought the car to my house! I’ve had this car at Jeff’s for TEN YEARS. Started building it in his shop in Aug. of 2010 and Sunday was the first time I’ve ever had it in my garage! I’m hoping this helps me spend more time on the car. I, of course, have a fresh and long list of things to get done. First, the things that went well this weekend:
the USB cables I have wired into the car now worked and I didn’t have any problems with the camera or lap timer running out of juice
staring both races this weekend means I’ve completed my rookie period and should be getting my full comp. license in the mail soon!
this weekend I ran 96 octane gas in the car and had NO run-on issues. I had been running 91 oct. and the car would diesel when I shut if off
the really bad vibration is gone! (it was the driveshaft). there IS still some vibration but it’s a low frequency vibration, isn’t that bad and isn’t holding me back
what I’m going to work on for the next race:
replace the power steering AN hose I put on at the track (it was a temp fix, need a high pressure line)
replace the power steering reservoir (I’m going to try a plastic unit from Summit)
add a power steering cooler (Adam GAVE me a cooler at the track, thanks Adam!)
check my oil level and see if I can come up with some kind of dip stick
LOWER the car. (ordered 2″ drop spindles and will try to get the car lower)
try some aero (I’m going to make front and rear spoiler extensions to try to get a little downforce on the car)
seal up the front grill area as much as possible (Corey from Agent 47 said all the air getting into the engine bay is acting like a parachute and slowing me down)
come up with a better rear-end breather setup. the one I made keeps kinking the hose which means it’s NOT allowing any venting when it kinks
here’s a couple of pics and a video of Saturdays race. 37 days until the next race at Buttonwillow!
